eBusiness Weekly
Business Writer
DELTA Corporation says it has leveraged on its integrated value chain business model that has kept it going over the years despite the harsh economic environment that was characterised by hyperinflation.
The beverages producer’s integrated value chain programme involves contract farming, capacitating players in the distribution chain with a fleet of vehicles where Delta has over 200 haulage trucks distributing their product countrywide.
Delta’s integrated value chain business model also includes supporting retailers for the company’s products with cold chain.
Speaking at the three-day Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) annual conference that began in Harare on Wednesday, Delta group chief executive officer Matts Valela said: “I table these things because it is important to understand how Delta has weathered the storm through hyperinflation to now as we march forward . . . because we are involved from the primary production, which is agriculture, we have been able to self-sufficient with our inputs because of the integrated value chain business model that we have adopted.”
He said the benefits of developing an integrated value chain business model among others is that business continuity is assured.
“We always contract for plus or minus 30 000 tonnes of barley, sometimes we get the 7 000 hectares for our use and for exports.
“Until Government and other players started contracting wheat, barley was coming out bigger than wheat.
Delta’s value chain partners are largely farmers on account that the company was in the agro-processing sector.
“We work with farmers to do about 7 000 hectares of barley every year and we work with about 12 000 households in this country to grow sorghum that we use in our Chibuku (opaque beer) businesses and we contract for some maize,” said Valela.
Delta’s mainstays are brewing and manufacturing and the firm operates about 22 production plants employing an estimated 7000 employees.
“From the brewing process, we work with distributors, they make the difference on our customer experience and taking the product to where our customer want it and we work with thousands of customers,” he said.
Meanwhile, in a trading update for the first quarter ended June 30, 2022, Delta’s revenue grew by 55 percent in inflation adjusted terms compared to the growth 283 percent in historical cost terms.
The above reflects volume growth and the replacement cost-based pricing.
